Facebook & Google Advertising working together

[Editor’s note: I’m excited to share this guest post from John W. Ellis of Crescent Interactive, a Nashville, Tennessee PPC and SEO consultancy. A successful hands-on practioner of SEO and PPC for more than a decade, John is a frequent blogger, article contributor, speaker and consultant able to empower companies seeking to improve and expand their online marketing efforts.]

For over 10 years, I have been managing PPC (per-per-click) advertising. By far the most utilized PPC resource has been Google AdWords. At Crescent Interactive, although we are familiar with multiple channels and platforms, we spend the vast majority of our time in Google Adwords.

For those not familiar with AdWords, these are the sponsored ads that show up in Google search results. Yes, searchers do click those ads. In fact, that’s where Google makes the volume of its revenue.

There have been a lot of changes to Google AdWords over the past 10 years, but for the most part it’s essentially been an active advertising strategy. PPC via AdWords works extremely well when targeting the correct keywords. Google AdWords does not necessarily create demand for products or services, it captures it. AdWords captures consumers in the buying cycle.

Facebook advertising is a different approach. It allows advertisers to tap into users’ demographics and interest. We’ve all see these ads. Often times they tap into something we have Liked. This type of advertising captures users at the early staged of the buying cycle. It’s creates awareness. Like Google, Facebook ads are also a PPC format. Advertisers pay for every click an ad receives.

We have different approaches when comparing Facebook and Google. Both are effective and have a role in a complete online marketing strategy. For the most part these are separate entities, but using Google’s Remarketing these efforts can now be combined.

Using this tool as it’s designed allows advertisers to “re-target” prior visitors. As it is it’s a great tool. However, it’s dependent on getting the right users to visit your site. That’s where Facebook targeting comes in handy.

Of course, remarketing does have a “creepy” factor to it. Intrusive marketing can be avoided and it’s usually just a sign of lazy marketers, not bad technology. However, using Facebook data helps with more targeted approach.

By creating ads using Facebook’s ad platform, marketers can target specific interest. In turn, they can send those consumers to a unique landing page. This is where Google comes into play. Google Remarketing allows advertisers to tag these visitors and essentially create an audience. That audience can then be retargeted later.

Confusing? Let’s walk through some examples

Facebook Targeting: Women Shoes

In the above Facebook targeting group, we can see options for targeting women’s shoes. Creating ads for this audience would lead to a landing page on a website. Now, that the audience has been created. From there, very-targeted ads can be shown through out the Google Display Network. Why show ads for women’s shoes to anyone else, other than this audience?

This is just touching the surface on how to combine these two great tools. Google audience creation is the heart and soul of this type of type of campaign. For details setting those up, I recommend reading http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2454064

At Crescent Interactive, we work with clients on combing social and search together in various ways, including Remarketing. I’d love to hear your opinion on how these two channels can be used together. Leave your comments below and let’s discuss.